The present disclosure relates to patient support apparatuses, such as beds, cots, stretchers, operating tables, recliners, wheelchairs, or the like.
Existing hospital beds often include an exit detection system that detects when the patient leaves the bed and notifies a nurse call system that the patient has left the bed. Existing hospital beds also often include a nurse call button and speaker that allow the patient to communicate with a remote nurse using the nurse call system. Still other features and/or information regarding the bed may also be communicated to and/or through the nurse call system, or to a room control system that controls various aspects of the room in which the patient support apparatus is positioned (e.g. volume, channel, and power of a television, room temperature, room lights, etc.)
In order for the bed to communicate this information to the nurse call system or the room controls, the bed must be configured in a manner that corresponds to the particular nurse call system and room controls that have been installed in a particular healthcare facility, or a particular room of a healthcare facility. This is because different manufacturers of nurse call systems and room control systems handle communications in different manners. Further, communication between the bed and these systems typically is carried out via a cable running from the bed to a port on a headwall, and the configuration of the headwall port may vary from room to room and/or from healthcare facility to healthcare facility.
Existing hospital beds may also need to be properly configured in order to carry out other functions in lieu of, or in addition to, communicating with a nurse call system. Such other configuration requirements include, but are not limited to, configuration settings for enabling communication between the patient support apparatus and a local area network of the hospital; configuration settings for one or more sensors incorporated into the patient support apparatus; configuration settings for one or more optional components that are present on the patient support apparatus; configuration settings for loading, executing, and/or retrieving software applications; and still other types of configuration settings.